Archon (21 page)

Tileaf’s expression was eagerly keen as she beckoned to Angela. “Then we are agreed. Now come here, as close as you can. We must be touching . . . for this to work.”

Her disgust, it seemed, would have to rest for now.

Angela reached out, stretching her hand toward the Fae, Troy’s barrier shimmering like water as her arm passed through it. They were inches apart. Less than a breath.

Then their fingertips met, and she dropped to the ground, senseless.

Twenty-one

I am a demon. I have willingly gone down into darkness. Yet there is an Abyss that even I have not dared peer into.

—
T
HE
D
EMON
P
YTHON, TRANSCRIBED FROM
The Lies of Babylon

F
irst there was a void.

Then there were three thrones. And three Angels sat upon them.

The first and highest, seated above the others and above all the stars that spread into the sky, was Angela’s beautiful angel. He was more dazzling than in any dream she could remember, though right now she could remember none, and his hair and wings gleamed with a bronze that put the purest of metals to shame. His large sapphire eyes, like pools bluer than the richest seawater, considered everything below him with delicate pride, and his lips, pink and thin, filled her with want and endless desire. On top of his head, he wore a crown that resembled a vertical halo of crystal, its spindles likened to silvery rays, and below, near his winged ears, glass serpents dangled tongues of ruby.

He was dressed in crimson, the fabric hiding his body from ankles to neck to wrist, and yet all was revealed, because she wanted all.

For the briefest second, he opened his mouth and sang, and Angela sensed things around her connecting and reshaping themselves into other, more perfect things. He was the Creator Supernal, that was what Tileaf’s memories were saying, and he ruled because all who loved him wanted him to rule. And they were the majority.

This, she understood, was Israfel.

“In the ancient days of angelic history—”

Tileaf’s voice seemed to echo from an impossible distance, her words more like images that explained themselves through infusion.

“—God created three great children called the Supernals. Israfel, Raziel, and Lucifel. Creator, Preserver . . . and Destroyer. While all three shared equal power and influence, Israfel gradually rose to great favor . . . and was named Heaven’s first ruling Archangel. But although we refused to acknowledge a problem then, it soon became clear that a confrontation between him and Lucifel was inevitable. She had always been a solitary creature, but after Israfel’s coronation, an even greater and more impassable rift formed between them . . .”

But, like she had first seen, he was not alone.

Below him sat a shadow.

This shadow gazed up at him with open scorn and contempt, more disgusted than jealous, as if she could see flaws that no one else bothered to pick apart. This was Lucifel, the Devil herself before she threw down a third of the stars from Heaven, and she sat with a languid callousness that emptied the heart and the soul and spit it back into the void. Where Israfel was softness and sensual perfection, she was hard lines, her skin paler than fog, and her eyes redder than blood.

Gray.

Dust. She was ash, smoke, and vapor. The Destroyer Supernal’s wings and hair gathered about her like a mist, and her clothing was the opposite of Israfel’s, a careless swathe of fabric barely hiding her bloodless white limbs and shining feet. Around her neck, she wore the Grail, and the Eye seemed more alive than ever, blinking at the universe and sucking away its life.

Lucifel was living death.

There was a vacancy inside of her that was growing and no one knew when it would stop, and Angela could sense millions flocking to her because she had the power to take away life as if that were ecstasy, and they exulted in that darkness . . .

“. . . Raziel, who cared for them both, found himself acting as an intermediary. And so, the first step toward disaster occurred after his brief but unexpected absence. With Raziel gone, the civility he’d nurtured disintegrated rapidly. And by the time he reappeared, Heaven’s loyalties had been split in two. To be honest . . . a great many of us found Lucifel unapproachable, her ideas too heretical—and against Israfel’s powerful charisma she might have stood little chance. But he had changed after Raziel’s return . . . And when Israfel’s confident behavior faltered, so did the trust of thousands . . .”

One alone gazed at Lucifel with pity.

Angela herself.

Or rather, an angel with Angela’s large blue eyes and deep red hair. He was dressed in a coat of midnight blue, its silver embroidery seeming to be made of light plucked from the heavens, and jewels that resembled stars swept beneath his brow line and up onto the mysterious wings that were also his ears. His pinions were larger than Israfel’s and Lucifel’s, a beautiful blood red, and the stiff feathers over his wing bones drooped heavily beneath silver cuffs.

Gentleness shone in his expression, and he glanced from Israfel to Lucifel and back again with a sad premonition in his smile. Wiser than either of them, he seemed to know that his affection could never mend the hatred that was darkening Heaven.

This was the Preserver Supernal, and Angela felt all his stability and reassurance, relaxed in the blessing of his presence.

Until he did the unthinkable and flew from his throne, diving into the abyss . . .

“The situation only grew worse from there . . . for very soon afterward, Lucifel was found pregnant with Raziel’s chicks, and mating is forbidden between male and female angels, let alone siblings, unless the union has been approved. As you can imagine, Israfel did not take the news well. Not only had Lucifel betrayed his crown, she’d taken a brother away from him. And Raziel, by all appearances, had picked his ultimate side . . .”

Then a great horror appeared in Heaven: Lucifel, sweeping her Glaive—a dreadful weapon that seemed made more of blood than iron—and the stars blinking away into darkness beneath her lack of compassion. She walked among angels of all descriptions and genders, perfect or deformed, and those who refused to bow to her blade were cut down ruthlessly. Behind her, amid a sky that was green with evil storms and also black with their clouds, great serpents twisted through the ether, clearing vast flocks of angels with their fearsome jaws.

The vision was familiar and yet terribly alien, as Tileaf had warned, and Angela found relief again only when the scene changed to that of the Destroyer Supernal, gazing down at the blood she had so wantonly spilled. Completely unsympathetic . . .

Utterly vanquished inside.

“It was the Celestial Revolution. The chicks—it was long said—had been torn from Lucifel’s body and aborted, and rather than suffer any more punishment or humiliation, she’d summoned the cult that worshipped her to rebellion. An infamous rebellion
 
. . . and also the beginning of Raziel’s final hours. The battle was reaching its climax when he crossed the bridge to Ialdaboth, the highest dimension of Heaven, to speak with God, presumably about an end to what Raziel termed a useless battle
 
. . .

The verdict must have driven him mad . . .”

Now, a scene of almost unimaginable bloodshed.

Angels tearing down other angels with energy and ether and weapons that glittered like crystal but cut with the cruelty of ice. They tumbled and screamed in agony, feathers falling throughout Heaven like snow, and behind them, plummeting from a bridge that rose to the spire of the material universe, its gables made of pearlescent glass—Raziel, his face blank with terror and pain.

His wings were shredded. They were no more than rags spewing blood.

And that meant the end.

It was over, as if someone had flipped a switch, as every combatant paused to watch one of the Supernals die . . .

It was over.

“Lucifel had lost the war. And Raziel, it was commonly agreed, had committed suicide rather than subject himself to the punishment of God . . .”

Darkness came over all of Heaven. Lucifel and her flock of dissenters, descending like a living smoke, down and down and down . . .

“For with her lover dead and the war decided, she fled to Hell
 
. . . piercing it all the way to the Abyss, where the demonic regime continues to this very day. Her name is hateful to the angels, and every one of her supporters, including Raziel, shares that legacy. All his belongings and writings were destroyed, and among them was his greatest work—”

The Book of Raziel.

Reality shifted and Angela was suddenly out of Tileaf’s memories, standing in a space where she could walk, talk, and breathe, her consciousness now separated from the Fae’s by a renewed sense of individuality. In this place, she had will and sensation, but for a short time, the strangeness of what she had just seen, that sense of the alien, curled her into a ball of terror and pain. She merely lay there, in the blackness that was enough to give her existence, seeing nothing but Lucifel’s face and Israfel’s beauty, and the immense starlit perfection of Heaven spattered with their red blood.

She was a grain of dust before all of it. Ignorant and terrifyingly weak.

The shock refused to leave her, the terror would never end, this hell would never end—

And then,
it
was lying next to her. A book made of pure sapphire, its cover emblazoned with an Eye that nearly matched the Grail around her neck in size. But this Eye was gray in color, more sad than terrible, and without thinking, Angela stretched out a hand and brushed it with her fingertips, causing the eyelid to shut.

“Yes,” Tileaf’s voice continued like a whisper, “there are rumors that the Book still exists. That it was not destroyed, as was commonly thought, but, that of its own free will it followed Lucifel . . . to Hell.”

Angela leaned closer, trying to pick up the Book. But the sapphire was far too heavy, leaving her with the option of opening the cover or walking away.

She touched it, rubbing her hand across the blue rock.

It had a heartbeat. It was alive.

“Do not be fooled. What you are seeing is only a representation, a symbol, of the Book passed down in legend and myth . . . There are perhaps none living besides Lucifel herself who have seen its true form. And, of course, opening it is impossible.

“Those who try to do so, but do not possess even one of the Supernals’ spirits, are stricken with insanity.

“Besides . . . the Key and its Lock have yet to be found
 
. . .”

The Book vanished, curls of blue ether wrapping around Angela’s fingers before disappearing. Light illuminated the darkness, and she rocked back to her feet, still standing on a void that seemed solid as real earth but glassy smooth. Perhaps this was the foundation of Tileaf’s mind, firm despite so much torture. Angela stared out into the space she’d been granted on it, and a wind sighed from the nothingness, blowing through her hair, full of voices that sounded like a million souls speaking at once. Beseeching her.

The light continued to brighten.

“The Archon, known mistakenly to humankind as the Ruin, is said to be the reincarnation of Raziel’s soul. The Supernal’s Book, which contains both a power and a knowledge beyond the comprehension of most creatures, must be opened, and only by Her, because with Israfel vanished into the highest reaches of Heaven, there is no other able or willing to do so without suffering severe consequences.

“Lucifel is
not
an option
 
. . .”

There was a sun peeping over the unnameable horizon, but it gave off a sallow glow that barely revealed the rifts and valleys of Tileaf’s mind. Angela now stood on a cliff with a jagged edge, her boots scraping it precariously, and within the barren valley below her, human beings stood in rows of silence, their souls gray as the sun was gray, looking up at her with a sense of need and longing. Angela gazed out at them, overcome by their numbers, their misery.

“Even the dead are aware of the looming threat of the Great Satan. Lucifel, she who was prophesied as the one who would confront God in order to become a god herself, is now crazed to the point of utter darkness. Seeking to open the Book of Raziel, she would only use its power to end the universe she believes has wronged her . . . and her cult, which makes up half of Hell, wishes for the fulfillment of her ideals.

“The omens are there, and her most fanatical believers now move to assist her . . . to open her cage
 
. . .”

Storm clouds gathered in the far distance, echoes of Tileaf’s pain and her warning. Lightning sliced the sky like a pitchfork of crimson.